The Frumious Bandersnatch

Carella had been taught by a sergeant at the Academy never to trust a smiling man with a gun in his hand. He wondered if that same sergeant had ever said anything about a roomful of smiling men in suits, all of whom were packing if the bulges under their jackets were any indication.

“Meet the rest of the team,” Endicott said, and introduced first his lookalike in the blue suit, “Special Agent Brian Forbes,” and then another FBI agent whose name flew by like the Twentieth Century, and then the pair of city dicks, one of them a Detective/First, the other a Detective/Second. Carella thought he recognized one of the names as belonging to a man who’d made spectacular headlines breaking up either a dope ring or a racketeering scheme or something of the sort—but what had Endicott meant by “Welcome aboard?” Or Corcoran by “Welcome to The Squad?”

Everyone was still smiling.

“I brought that stuff you asked for,” Carella said, and walked over to the large conference table in the center of the room and put down his dispatch case. Through the huge windows facing South, he could see across the square to the new red brick Police Headquarters building, ablaze with light even at this hour. He snapped open the latches on the case, lifted the lid, and removed from it first a sheaf of his own and Hawes’ typed DD reports…

“Our reports on the crime scene witnesses,” he said.

…and then the reports Meyer and Kling had filed on their visits to the marina and their interview with the marina watchman…

“These are about the boat and the stolen Explorer.”

…and then the report Willis had typed up on his and Parker’s visit to Polly Olson.

“Also,” he said, “the report from Mobile was waiting when I got there. I haven’t looked at it yet. I can leave it here with the other stuff, if you like.”

“He still doesn’t get it,” Corcoran said, smiling.

Carella wondered if his fly was open.

“What?” he said.

“You’ll be working with us,” Endicott said.

Carella figured they must be shorthanded. Some detective out sick or on vacation. Supposed to be twelve men on the Joint Task Force, only six of them in the room here, still smiling like drunken sailors.

“We thought Mr. Loomis should be working with someone he liked and trusted.”

“Actually, I asked if that would be possible,” Loomis said, and nodded.

“Will that be okay, Steve?” Endicott asked.

“Well…sure,” Carella said.

“Now you’re pissing with the big dogs,” Corcoran said, grinning, and clapped Carella on the back.

Hard.

FAT OLLIE WEEKSwas watching a cable television channel whose slogan was “Equal and Equitable,” which they hoped conveyed the promise of commensurate and unbiased reportage on any subject their reporters tackled. Tonight’s burning question was “Gay or Fey?” and its subject matter was the Tamar Valparaiso video Bison Records had generously provided.

The moderator was a man named Michael Owens, who was familiarly called “Curly” Owens by his colleagues because he happened to be bald. This reverse spin was something called “irony,” a favorite figure of speech practiced in English-speaking countries where it was thought clever to express a meaning directly contrary to that suggested by the words themselves. Curly was, in fact, the very opposite of hirsute, his condition exacerbated by daily shavings and waxings that gave his head the appearance of an overripe melon.

His two guests tonight were at opposite ends of the political and cultural spectrum in that one of them was a minister who represented a Christian Right activist organization that called itself the “Citizens for Values Coalition,” or the CVC, and the other was a homosexual who was speaking for a group that called itself “Priapus Perpetual,” or PP for short.

Ollie didn’t choose to waste time watching a fag who called his prick a pee pee debating a priest who was probably a fag himself, but he happened to be eating at the kitchen table right then, and the clicker was on the coffee table in front of the TV set, and he didn’t feel like walking into the adjoining room to go switch channels. Besides, he had just watched the clip from the Valparaiso video, and he had to agree that the little lady was splendidly endowed, ah yes, so maybe these two jackasses would have something interesting to say about her obviously fey assets. Ollie supposed the word “fey” had something to do with female pulchritude, otherwise why had it been positioned opposite the word “gay”?

“Well, you’ve seen the video,” Curly told his guests. “So which is it? Gay or Fey?”

The minister’s name was Reverend Karl Brenner. He was a man with a long sallow face and snow white hair, wearing for tonight’s show Benjamin Franklin spectacles and a rumpled, dark gray suit with a white collar, the fuckin hypocrite, Ollie thought. Brenner himself thought the words “gay” and “fey” were synonymous; he had no idea what they were supposed to be debating here. If a man was fey, he was, ergo, gay. And the African- American man on the video was obviously both feyand gay.

The representative of Priapus Perpetual was named Larry Graham. He knew that the widely accepted meaning of “fey” was “strange or unusual” but he himself had been considered strange or unusual long before he became gay. Dressed tonight in a purple turtleneck sweater over which he had thrown a beige cashmere jacket, he sat looking smug and self-satisfied, the little fag, Ollie thought. Actually, Graham was as bewildered as the reverend was, even though he realized the question wasn’t being asked about the black dancer who’d played the Bandersnatch, but rather about Tamar Valparaiso herself, whose father had warned “Beware the Jabberwock, myson, ” mind you, and had later exulted, “Come to my arms, my beamishboy, ” don’t forget.

As Graham saw it, the question being asked was: Who or what is this person with the exuberant breasts in a torn and tattered costume? A girl or a boy? A daughter or a son? A male or a female? In short, gay or fey? A revealed homosexual or merely a female eccentric, a whimsical adolescent girl, or—dare one even suggest it—a visionary? A Joan of Arc, mayhaps, wielding an invisible vorpal sword?

“What do you say, gentlemen?” Curly asked, and then immediately said, “Ooops, excuse me, Larry,” and then, compounding the felony, said, “But that’s what the debate tonight is all about, isn’t it? Is the person on that tape supposed to be homosexual, like Larry Graham here, who admits it freely? And if so…”

“Of course he is,” Graham said.

“Reverend?”

“Are we talking about the African-American in the mask? If so, he is verydefinitely homosexual.”

“And how do you knowthat? ” Graham asked at once.

“Well, the very way hemoves, ” Brenner said.

“He moves like a dancer,” Graham said.

“Fred Astaire didn’t move that way. Neither did Gene Kelly.”

“Besides, we’re not talking about thedancer. The question does not refer to thedancer. ”

“It certainly doesn’t refer to thegirl, ” Brenner said.

“That’s exactly the metaphor,” Graham said.

The Reverend Brenner didn’t know what metaphor meant, either. He thought it meant simile. If so, was this little homosexual person here implying that the girl being assaulted was somehow a simile for a homosexual?

“I do not see any connection,” he said. “The problem with organizations like yours, Mr. Graham, is that you presuppose everyone in the world is eitheralready homosexual or else would like tobecome homosexual. That is the implicit threat to family values, and the entire reason for the existence of groups like CVC…”

“I do believe, yes,” Larry said, “that ‘Bandersnatch’ is about a young boy coming out of the closet, yes. If we study the video carefully, we…”

“Oh, please,” Brenner said, “that’s utter nonsense.”

“Why don’t we take another look at it?” Curly said, and to someone off camera, “Can we roll it again, boys?”